Plant Hydrocleaning Filtration Saves Money
80 GPM polymer injection and filtration reduces coal plant hydrocleaning costs
View PDFA West Virginian hydrocleaning contractor needed assistance during a three-stage turnaround of a coal power plant. Filtration was needed for the ash from the fire-side hydrocleaning project. Solids were removed for offsite hauling and the water was filtered for reuse in the plant cleaning.
Chitosan polymer was injected into settling tanks of ash-laden water and pumped through media filtration at a rate of 80 GPM. A portable water quality monitoring unit logged and reported pH and NTU levels in the water.
The pH of the water was raised from 2.5 to 9.5 in order to precipitate iron and copper from the water. The settled solids were removed for offsite transport and a PF-400 cartridge filter unit was used with 0.5 micron absolute cartridges to meet discharge specs.
The hydrocleaning contractor normally used 100 of their own in-line filters during similar projects, but was able to reduce that to just one filter because of the effective filtration system developed by Rain for Rent.
The project results included reduced costs and turnaround time which lead the plant to immediately schedule three additional cleanings utilizing the filtration system. Over the course of the cleaning, the plant owner reduced their cleaning water consumption from 1.5 million gallons to 150,000.